Samuel Sanders Teulon was born in Greenwich, Kent [now London], England on 2 May 1812 and was the son of Samuel Teulon (1785-?), a cabinetmaker of Huguenot descent who became a surveyor. After attending the Royal Academy Schools in London, he was articled to George Legg (1790-1882) and George Porter (1795?-1856) in London.
Teulon started his own independent practice in London in 1838. His early work was conventional and unadventurous, however, he was soon won over to the Gothic Revival style, to which he gave his own idiosyncratic interpretation, characterised by the use polychromatic brickwork.
Teulon was elected an Associate of the Institute of British Architects (AIBA) in 1835, and a Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects (FRIBA). He died at his home, Tensleys, 3 The Green, Hampstead, London on 2 May 1873
Teulon was a prolific architect who over a 35-year career designed or restored numerous parish churches and several substantial country houses and estate buildings for wealthy and aristocratic clients. Notable among these were Tortworth Court in Gloucestershire (1849–53); Leckhampsted in Berkshire (1859–60); Shadwell in Norfolk (1856–60); Elvetham Hall in Hampshire (1859–62); Huntley in Gloucestershire (1861–63), Bestwood Park in Nottinghamshire (1862–64); and Hawkley, Hampshire (1865). Of his churches, his masterpiece is considered to be St Stephen's at Rosslyn Hill in Hampstead, London (1869–75), completed following Teulon's death by Ewan Christian (1814-1895). Teulon also designed complete villages. Among these was the Huguenot settlement of Thorney near Peterborough, Northamptonshire [now Cambridgeshire], for which he designed more than a hundred buildings between 1843 and 1863 for the 7th Duke of Bedford's estate workers.
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See also: Historic England; British Listed Buildings; Wikimedia Commons [see links]
Directory of British Architects 1834-1914. Compiled by Antonia Brodie, et al. Volume 2: L-Z. London; New York: British Architectural Library, Royal Institute of British Architects/Continuum, 2001
Girouard, Mark. 'Acrobatic Gothic'. Country Life vol. 148, 31 December 1970 pp. 1282-1286
Girouard, Mark. 'Shadwell Park, Norfolk'. Country Life vol. 136, 2 July 1964 pp. 18-21 [Part one of a two-part article on the enlargement of Shadwell Park, an 18th-century house in Norfolk, by Edward Blore in 1840-43, and by Teulon in 1856-60]
Girouard, Mark. 'Shadwell Park, Norfolk'. Country Life vol. 136, 9 July 1964 pp. 98-102 [Part two of a two-part article on the enlargement of Shadwell Park, an 18th-century house in Norfolk, by Edward Blore in 1840-43, and by Teulon in 1856-60]
Girouard, Mark. The Victorian Country House. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, revised and enlarged edition, 1979.
Isherwood, David Owen. The Churches of S. S. Teulon. M.Phil thesis, School of Architecture and Landscape, Thames Polytechnic [now University of Greenwich], 1986 [Available as a PDF online. See link below]
Saunders, Mathew. The Churches of S. S. Teulon. London: Ecclesiological Society, 1982.
Saunders, Mathew J. ‘Samuel Sanders Teulon, 1812–1873: a pragmatic rogue’ in The Architectural Outsiders, edited by Roderick Brown. London: Thames & Hudson, 1985 pp.132-152
Teulon, Alan Edward. The Life and Work of Samuel Sanders Teulon: Victorian Architect. Northampton: [privately published by the author, 2009